Dynamic binding

Dynamic binding or late binding is the mechanism a computer program waits until runtime to bind the name of a method called to an actual subroutine. It is an alternative to early binding or static binding where this process is performed at compile-time. Dynamic binding is more expensive computationally, but it has the advantage of being more likely to avoid version conflicts when binding functions of a linked library.

The ability to perform dynamic binding is a common characteristic of high-level languages, such as C++, Java, and Lisp.

Call, Compile, Program, Programming terms